Wrong Highway

by Wendy A. Gordon

  “You okay?” he asked. “I thought you were going to pass out. Would you like some water?”

  Erica shook her head and returned to her cross-legged position. “What about Jared?” she asked.

  “He’s back home. Ralph Rossiter located him. The detective. They were staying with some friends of Ashley’s in Philadelphia. Some former teachers of hers.”

  The ant skittered through the shag forest while Sophia, forgetting about Sesame Street, slithered after in pursuit. Erica stretched out her right leg, creating an obstacle for both creatures, and bent her left leg inward. She sucked in her stomach and breathed deeply.

  “How did you find out?” she asked.

  “One of the kids from the family clinic told me about it yesterday. You know, at drop-in.”

  Nick still hovered over her, way too close. His breath smelled like pizza. And where the hell was Sophia? Oh, great, she’d discovered Nick’s prized record collection and was extracting a Procol Harum LP from the stack.

  A vein pulsed in Erica’s left eyelid. Sophia rocked the Procol Harum album back and forth. The vinyl disk slid out and landed on the carpet, making a brushing noise.

  “Hey,” Nick said, grabbing the album out of her hand. “Hey, that’s valuable.”

  Erica crawled over and grabbed the baby with one arm, holding onto the turntable for purchase as she struggled to standing.

  “Can I have my CDs?” she asked. “I gotta see Jared.”

  : : :

  The New York air carried a bite to it that didn’t exist in Florida. The sun lay closer to the horizon, and the slant of light was harsher, less forgiving. Erica buttoned Nick’s flannel shirt. Nobody had called her about Jared. Not her parents, not Debbie. No attempts, not one lousy little message, as if she had no right to know.

  The pulsing in her eyelid returned, soon joined by a shaking in her legs, like she was about to splinter into a thousand pieces. Sophia clawed at her shoulder. Erica zipped up her jacket and buckled the baby into her car seat and then jerked Vince out of the pet store lot so fast that his engine choked and sputtered. Bloody Tampax blared out of the speakers. No, it wasn’t Bloody Tampax—it was one of Jared’s other favorite bands, named, in a similarly gross vein, Barf. She figured if she listened to this music long enough, she’d acclimate to it. The slam of each dissonant chord resonated with her growing anger.

  Barf hit a horrific minor chord and dissolved into an endless drum solo. A garbage truck materialized inches from her windshield, plastic bags hanging from its green teeth. Erica slid to the left and passed the ugly green thing, her driver’s side tires scraping against the curb.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Debbie’s face sank when she saw Erica.

  “Oh, hi, Rikki,” she said. “I was going to lie down. I just got back from a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Where’s Jared?” Erica snapped.

  “What do you mean?” Debbie asked, still standing at the door, as if Erica were an annoying Jehovah’s Witness she wished to politely dismiss as soon as possible.

  “What do I mean?” Erica’s voice rose. “Do you think I’m an idiot? All week you don’t call me, and then I come back and hear from—from a neighbor—that Rossiter found him and brought him home. Where is he? Is he okay?”

  “He’s not here,” Debbie said.

  “Where is he? Did he go back to school already?”

  Debbie blanched. “He’s at the Pritima Center,” she said, looking down at the floor.

  “You’ve got to be kidding! You promised me you wouldn’t send him to that place!” Erica’s voice rose higher.

  “Stop screaming at me, Rikki,” Debbie said, backing away.

  “Only Ron’s allowed to scream at you, huh? You lied to me!” Erica grabbed Debbie’s hands by the wrists, the way she sometimes grabbed her children’s wrists when she was angry. Debbie jumped back, skidding slightly on the polished marble tiles.

  “What’s wrong with you, Rikki? Get your hands off me! I never lied to you. I told you we wanted Jared home and safe. He is safe.”

  “You didn’t call me!”

  “I didn’t have your phone number at the hotel.” Debbie looked down at her wrists. There were red imprints right where the veins led into her palm. “I left you a message this morning.” Sighing, she massaged her wrists.

  “I haven’t checked my messages,” Erica admitted. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, Rikki.” Debbie put on her therapy face. “Can we sit down? I’m really exhausted.” She sunk onto one of their white suede living room couches.

  Erica settled into the couch opposite. “Ron’s idea, huh?”

  “No, we both agreed.” Debbie knotted her fingers together, stroking the new bruises on her wrists.

  Erica dug around her diaper bag for a bottle.

  “You finally stopped nursing.” Debbie nodded approvingly.

  “Yep.” Erica desperately missed the luscious closeness of Sophia at her breast. She fought a desire to kick her leg and knock all of Debbie’s prized snow globes off the coffee table like dominoes.

  “To tell the truth, I was scared to call you. I knew you wouldn’t approve of our decisions about Jared.” Debbie swallowed and breathed in hard, like she was about to plunge into one of her DDD slide presentations. “At first when Detective Rossiter brought Jared home, he seemed thankful to be here, but within hours it became clear he wasn’t going to comply with his therapy or medication. And we had to get him away from that awful Ashley girl. They were staying in some sort of commune in Philadelphia, with two older associates of Ashley’s, former middle school teachers, would you believe. They were sharing a mattress on the floor and begging for money on the streets!”

  “You don’t know anything about the Pritima Center except that stupid slide presentation and pamphlet.” Erica’s hand, holding Sophia’s bottle, trembled.

  “As you know, Dr. Rafferty thinks very highly of the Pritima Center, and she does have a doctorate in psychology and she is the director of the Nassau Family Clinic. They’ve had lots of success with boys like Jared.”

  “Who exactly are boys like Jared?’ Erica asked. “There’s only one Jared. Your son. My nephew.”

  “I mean boys with DDD,” Debbie said. “You heard Dr. Rafferty’s lecture. They all exhibit certain behavioral similarities.”

  “Where is this prison?” Erica asked.

  Debbie swallowed again, measuring her words. “It’s not a prison, Rikki—it’s a school. And I can’t tell you where he is. He isn’t allowed to have any contact with the outside world for six weeks. That’s part of his treatment protocol.”

  “I’m not the outside world,” Erica said. “I’m his aunt.”

  “Those are the rules.” Debbie rearranged her hands in her lap.

  “Screw the rules,” Erica said, her voice losing its tentative control, the pulse in her eyelid returning. Her fingers shook harder, jostling the nipple of Sophia’s bottle out of its secure position between her lips. “Sorry, sweetie, sorry,” Erica soothed, readjusting. “Six goddamn weeks! And then what?”

  “I don’t know,” Debbie said. “You’re screaming at me again.” Her resigned and pained manner only infuriated Erica further. She wished Debbie would yell back at her so they could fight openly. She wished Debbie would grab her wrists back, scratch her, punch her, call her bluff, do anything but sit limply, injured and superior. Debbie was lying about Ron never hitting her. She’d take the punch and nurse the hurt.

  Sophia guzzled the last of her bottle. Erica put her down on Debbie’s white Berber carpet. No chance of her encountering mysterious indigestible substances or crawling ants here.

  “You should pick the baby up,” Debbie said. “The wool fibers might give her an allergic reaction.”

  Erica picked Sophia up. “Take your damn nap,” she said. “I’m
out of here.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand,” said Debbie, showing her the door. “You never do. You have no idea how Jared was living in Philadelphia. They were digging for food in Dumpsters. His underwear was filthy. His good leather jacket was missing; somebody probably stole it. And that awful girl. She’s so much more sophisticated than him. She makes him do things he would never do himself.”

  Debbie watched Erica load Sophia into her car seat.

  “What are you staring at?” Erica snapped. “Go take your nap!”

  “I was wondering where you got that ugly flannel shirt,” Debbie said. “It doesn’t fit you.”

  : : :

  At least Debbie hadn’t lied about leaving a phone message; a terse “welcome back, call me” repeated itself on the answering machine along with recorded advertisements for a new cable service and a company that delivered restaurant meals to the home. Nick’s flannel shirt smelled musty, disturbingly intimate, and Debbie had a point about the fit: the shoulder seams hung halfway down her arm. She tossed it in the washing machine with a load of color wash. She still felt its muskiness clinging to her, as if molecules of Nick’s skin had sloughed off onto her chest.

  What a fool she’d been to trust Debbie. Debbie was putty in Ron’s hands.

  Erica was made of stronger stuff. She would never let her children live in fear, never drive them from her home, never pack them off to thinly disguised prisons. She would stop doing drugs. She would finish her newly replenished supply of coke and then never go back to Nick again. She would eat only healthy food and never miss her aerobics class. She would clear up this mess of clothes on the floor. But first she needed to find out where Jared was.

  She called Patti, who proved friendly, at least. She didn’t have much positive to say about Debbie, referring to her as a Goody Two-Shoes who thought her son walked on water. Ashley drove her crazy, Patti acknowledged, but she drew the line at having her daughter referred to as a slut. She’d canceled a planned trip to St. Croix with her boyfriend and had given up on public school, enrolling Ashley in the small and expensive Pine Forest Academy in Sea Cliff. She truly had no idea where the Pritima Center was, though, and she needed to hang up, or else she’d be late picking up Ashley for her therapy appointment.

  Which was just as well, because at the same moment the twins waddled sleepily into the kitchen demanding attention and Dylan burst in the door freaking out about an upcoming tennis tournament. He was beginning to resemble a miniature version of Ethan: sturdily constructed, jeans short at the ankles (add new jeans to the to-do list), broadening shoulders, a shock of curly strawberry-blond hair, a perpetual tan. He was preparing for an afternoon of tennis while Jared, no doubt, trudged on a forced march up a steep mountainside, assailed by heat and mosquitoes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  As Sophia watched from her playpen, Erica engaged in the messy task of transferring Sam from his outgrown cage to the larger one, adding a fresh supply of greens, and hooking up the heat lamps again. He stared at her with placid eyes, like two opals. She crunched up the old newspapers laden with lizard poop, stuffed them in a paper bag, and brought them out to trash can. She placed the stinky bundle in the bin, nearly stumbling over Ashley, as pale and skinny as ever, wearing designer jeans, a lacy green silk sweater, dirty running shoes, and a pair of white anklets.

  “Hi, Mrs. Richards,” she said.

  “I just called your mother,” Erica blurted.

  Ashley tugged dismissively at her sweater, as if daring it to unravel. “I needed to talk to you,” she said as they went inside. “I go to the most retarded school. They sent us out on a nature walk, can you believe it? We were collecting flower pollen, which I’m deathly allergic to.” As if to emphasize the point, Ashley sneezed. “The teacher went in for a cup of coffee. I hitchhiked here.”

  “Your mother told me about your new school, but she didn’t seem too keen on me talking to you.” Erica scrubbed her hands at the kitchen sink.

  “She probably thinks you’re a bad influence,” Ashley said. “Not that she hangs out with saints herself. She’s always going out with her girlfriends to bars and stuff. She changes her boyfriend every five minutes, and they’re all such lame disco creeps. The last one she went out with came on to me. Right in front of her. You know what he said to me?”

  “What?” Erica offered Ashley coffee, but when she shook her head no, poured a cup for herself, bitter thick remnants of her morning brew.

  “‘Boom, boom, boom, let’s go back to my room.’” Ashley grimaced. And Mrs. Lassler—I can’t believe she’s your sister, Mrs. Richards; you two are so different—she thinks everybody is a bad influence on her little baby boy. She treats Jared like he was two years old. And don’t mention Mr. Lassler. What an asshole.”

  “So tell me about Philadelphia.” Erica inhaled the acrid coffee. “What was it like?”

  “Nothing much,” Ashley said. “We watched TV. We got high with the other kids. We looked in Dumpsters for food and, boy, was that gross. We ate discarded vegetables from the supermarket bins and outdated peanut butter.”

  “Who are these older men you stayed with?” Erica gulped the last of the coffee and then set the mug down on the table.

  “The teachers I told you about. They used to be group leaders at the Nassau Family Clinic. Like Nick Stromboli is now. Jared told me you guys know each other?”

  At the mention of Nick, an electric tingle lit up Erica’s body. “Yeah, Nick lives down the street from my parents,” she said. “He runs an employment agency for housekeepers.”

  “He’s actually a dope dealer,” Ashley continued. “What do you think of that? And these guys in Philadelphia, well, they used to be stockbrokers. Then they had some kind of revelation or mental breakdown or something and became therapists instead. Only not real therapists. They got certified through the mail. And one of them owned this house in Philadelphia—it was a heirloom belonging to his family. They were rich, I guess, because it was a cool old house, with all these staircases going nowhere and little rooms with no purpose and these toilets with pull chains and a yard full of weeds.”

  “Both of them lived there together?” Erica got down on her hands and knees, picking up the puzzle pieces and random plastic objects littering the room.

  “They were bisexual,” Ashley said. “Roger was always walking around in his boxers, coming on to me. He was like six foot six, but he had the world’s smallest penis. You wouldn’t think someone that tall could have such a tiny penis.”

  Erica couldn’t help laughing, though she also recalled Debbie’s comment about AIDS. She continued picking up toys, sorting them into appropriate piles to put away later.

  “He had this wife, but she ran away to Fiji with the contractor on their house and left him with their kid. A retarded kid, about seven years old. I felt kind of bad for him, about the kid.”

  Something about the retarded child brought Ashley up short. A rustling and cooing came from the playpen, and they turned to see Sophia pulling herself up against the fabric diamonds of the sides, uttering ma-ma sounds.

  “My God, that’s the first time she’s done that,” said Erica. “Stood up and said Mama, both. She’s so precocious. Maybe it’s because she’s the youngest.”

  “She is so adorable,” Ashley said. “I love that little lavender dress.” Her voice cracked and then her face collapsed, flooding with tears.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” Erica said, balancing Sophia on her hip.

  Ashley wiped her nose on her sweater, a sweater that Erica recognized as one she’d seen in the window of the Ziggy Boutique, at Westbury Mall, for $250.

  “Careful, you’re ruining that pretty sweater. It looks expensive.” Erica knew she sounded like her mother. As if, with Ethan’s recent bonus, she couldn’t buy that sweater, in every color, many times over.

  “They killed my baby!” Ashley choked ou
t. “They made me have an abortion. My mom and those assholes at the clinic. And don’t you think Mr. and Mrs. Lassler don’t know. ’Cause they do.”

  “You were pregnant? You were pregnant with Jared’s baby?” Erica tried to picture Jared, her smooth-chested baby-faced nephew, as a father.

  Ashley nodded. “Even after they found us, I wasn’t going to tell them until it was too late. Until they couldn’t do anything about it. But my mother notices everything about your looks, if you haven’t figured that out yet. She took me shopping—see this sweater—and she noticed I had a little tummy bulge I didn’t have before. At first she thought I needed a diet. So she took me to her diet doctor, she said to make sure I was eating right, because, you know, I ate lots of hot dogs and junk in Philadelphia. But the doctor, he figured out what was going on and told her.”

  “So, did you change your mind? I mean, about having the baby?”

  “Yeah, right. Like, you assume I had a choice; like, you know how they say right to choice. They took me to Planned Parenthood in Port Washington, and this counselor told me why what they’d already decided to do was the only thing I could do.”

  Erica knew that Planned Parenthood clinic. She’d been there herself, in 1973. It was a brand-new proposition then, freshly legal, the chemical off-gassing of the new paint and carpeting blending with the antiseptic medical smell to intensify her vague nausea. Her mother had nothing to do with it, didn’t know a thing. She went with her friend Lane, who assured her that the procedure would be no worse than having her tonsils out.

  “I’m so sorry, Ashley,” Erica said.

  “Do you mind if I have something to drink, other than that coffee? Maybe something with real sugar in it?”

  Erica poured Ashley a glass of lemonade and filled up a bottle of formula for Sophia. In 1973, she’d also listened to the routine script from the counselor, who never dared raise any questions, who assumed the session would end as it did, holding Erica’s hand as a nice, clean, efficient doctor sucked Jeff’s baby out. Or maybe it wasn’t Jeff’s baby; that had been part of the problem. If she had been certain it was Jeff’s, surely she would have told him, and then? Well, who could possibly know? Maybe they would have run off to California and lived in a tent on the beach while Jeff strummed his guitar to the rhythm of the Pacific Ocean. Or maybe not.